Thicker than the Water of the Womb
by Colubrina
Summary: A Ministry official arrives on Andromeda Tonks doorstep, Draco Malfoy held by the wrist. His parents aren't fit, the official says. Well, tell Andromeda something she doesn't know. ONE SHOT.


She doesn't want to take him. That's the first thought Andromeda has when she opens her door and sees the Ministry equivalent of a social worker standing on the steps, a tiny, blond toddler held tightly by the wrist. He's been crying.

"No," she says, knowing her consent doesn't matter. Not to the Ministry of Magic. His parents are unfit, the woman explains and Andromeda Tonks nee Black has to contain her snort. No one has to tell her that Lucius Malfoy has no business raising a child. She wouldn't trust Lucius Malfoy with a dog, or a cat, or even a houseplant. And there's no doubt whose child the boy is. Even at all of two, he's the spitting image of his miserable, pureblood father.

She squints at his face but can't see anything of her sister. Her sister, who would be an excellent mother. Bella was mean by the time she could walk, but Cissy had always been kind. Well, she was kind until she wasn't. She taught Andromeda how to tie bows in her hair, and then how to catch frogs in the pond, and finally the horrible lesson that her love was conditional. She and Narcissa haven't spoken since the day Andromeda was tossed out for the sin of marrying beneath her. She pounded on the door of the Black family townhouse until her hands were bloody while Narcissa watched her from the window, her eyes cold and unforgiving as her sister sobbed to be let in, to be allowed to explain. She didn't open the door. Andromeda was marrying filth. She might as well be dead.

"Who is it?" Nymphadora at fifteen isn't contained by anything as trivial as social conventions or manners. She bursts through the door, looks at the boy with the dried tear streaks on his cheeks, and grins like a madwoman. "Are you coming to live here?" she asks with absolute delight as her hair shimmers in the sunlight and turns as white as the child's. As white as Lucius Malfoy's. As white as Narcissa's.

And right then Andromeda decides she'll do it.

"He is," she says, and her daughter – her precious, perfect daughter who doesn't startle at shadows or live in fear of her father – picks the boy up and twirls him around.

They are inseparable. More than once Andromeda finds herself, hands on hips, glaring at the two unrepentant mischief makers. Her daughter steals cookies. Draco eats them. Her daughter floats feathers around the room with the wand she is not supposed to be using. Draco chases them, laughing wildly as they dance up out of reach. Her daughter mimics the people they see in Diagon Alley, changing her face and her voice to be a querulous shopkeeper, a pompous, middle-aged wizard, a Muggle-born seeing their world for the first time, and her son claps and laughs.

Her son.

Andromeda isn't sure when she stops thinking of Draco as Draco Malfoy when he becomes her son, but that's what happens. The hair is all Malfoy, and the point of his chin too, but the smile comes from Nymphadora. The heart comes from her and Ted.

"Funny kid," Ted says early on as Draco flies around their backyard on a toy broom. "You'd think he'd ask about his parents."

"We're his parents," Andromeda says fiercely. And they are in all the ways that matter to her. All the ways that matter to anyone decent. They feed him. They sit with him when he has a fever. They teach him to see the world as a place filled with possibilities, a place where change is exciting, and a person's heart matters more than his bloodline. But sometimes, when she tucks Draco into bed and brushes a lock of that blond hair off his face, she remembers her own mother talking about tradition and purebloods and filth, and she knows that to a lot of people, this boy will always be a Malfoy, for good or for ill, and Hogwarts is coming sooner than she'd like.

"I think I want to be in Slytherin."

Draco's been feeling his way through all the different Houses all summer, talking up the strengths of one, or the weaknesses of another. Ted rolls his eyes. What feels endlessly, horribly important at eleven becomes just a bit of trivia from one's childhood by your thirties. Houses weren't ever important to Ted. That there was magic in the world was a wonder. He'd walked into Hogwarts with no idea of the weight that Sorting Hat carried. Family expectations. Societal expectations. _Gryffindor_ , the Hat had told her. _Slytherin_ , she'd said. She'd won, and her mother had sent her a box with a luxury green jumper and a pretty set of emerald earrings. If she'd lost, she would have been sent nothing except, quite possibly, instructions not to come home over the holidays. Daughters of the House of Black went into Slytherin. So did Malfoys.

Unless the world was changing.

"Oh?" Andromeda asks as she steers Draco into the shop to get measured for his first set of school robes. "I thought you had decided Hufflepuff was the best House."

"Well, Dora is there," he says very seriously. "But you told me Slytherin has a giant aquarium, and I love fish."

Nymphadora. Proof that granddaughters of the House of Black aren't as constrained by tradition as their mothers. Aren't as constrained by fear.

A small boy, surely too young to be getting ready for Hogwarts, is already in the shop. He has startling green eyes, and Andromeda stares at them for a moment, trying to remember when she'd seen eyes like that before, then shrugs. Green's not that unusual a color. Funny, the tricks the mind plays as you get older. Everyone reminds you of someone else. The boys latch onto one another with the unerring instinct children have when it comes to finding peers, and Draco starts his spiel on Hufflepuff versus Slytherin. Hufflepuff has better food, but Slytherin is fancier. And there's fish. The other boy listens, those green eyes so wide you'd think he'd never considered his House placement before.

Andromeda can't find a free salesgirl, which isn't that surprising because it's the busiest time of year, so she leaves Draco with firm instructions to stay out of trouble and goes hunting. When she returns, the green-eyed boy is leaving, and as he brushes his hair off his forehead, she catches a glimpse of a scar.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, dear.

"Harry and I have decided," Draco says.

The salesgirl doesn't betray her amusement at small boys deciding on their House placement, as if that were an option for most of them. She surely hears this every year and has learned not to step on dreams. She pulls out her tape measure, and it dances into place, moving from arm length to height to the breadth of Draco's narrow shoulders while the witch controlling it writes down each number.

"And what have you decided," Andromeda asks. She needs to go home, to find the old _Prophets_ that told the world about Harry Potter. She has forgotten him in ten years of peace. It's over, she tells herself. Harry Potter's just a boy now.

But she looks down at her son, at the mirror image of generations of pureblood monsters, and thinks about the Boy Who Lived, and she's afraid.

"We're both going to go into Hufflepuff," Draco says. "With Dora and the food."

"Well," Andromeda says as she passes payment over to the salesgirls and checks the box that, yes, she'd like the robes delivered when they are ready. "I'm sure that will make Nymphadora very happy."

She hopes it will make her happy too, but when the owl comes telling her that Draco got his wish and that he and Harry Potter were both in Hufflepuff, all it does is make her more afraid. Lucius Malfoy's son, in Hufflepuff, friends with Harry Potter.

The world hasn't changed that much.

Or maybe, Andromeda thinks, running her fingers over the parchment her son has sent her, the parchment brimming with the same sort of wonder she remembers seeing in Ted all those years ago, just maybe it has. Maybe it has changed just enough for this.

. . . . . . . . .

 _ **A/N - Thank you to snowflake dazzle for beta reading! To SM, sorry it took so long but your ficlet is at last done! Happy belated Hogswatch AND happy belated New Year AND happy belated birthday!**_


End file.
